Local Color

The PotChopper, alternately the HeliWeeder, is whining overhead. Apparently it flies over every August, looking for folks' patches of cannabis. They don't look kindly on the habit here, though you wouldn't know it from the thick fog which floated over FloydFest last weekend as soon as the sun set. Apparently when our neighbors bought their property some ten years ago, some good ol' farm boys helped them move in--accents thick as grits, overalls, and all. One of them started telling them how the property was perfect pot growing terrain and listed all the scientific names for the different varieties which would grow best in sun, shade, wet, dry, etc. Everyone's jaw just kind of dropped as he rattled on like a (illegally) certified botanist.  Welcome to Floyd, folks.

I don't mind the helicopter. It's better than the fighter jets that scream over like it's the beginning of WWIII or Civil War II, which some old timers around her probably wouldn't mind. No offense intended.

Yes, there's a lot of local color around here. Stepped into the office after lunch a while back and found this huge fellow in a tie dyed shirt and dreads with his pot belly propped against Ron's desk, using the phone. This little skinny bit of a girl in 3 kinds of plaid just stood there in the middle of the room waiting for him and asking questions about different kinds of fertilizer. Apparently their car had broken down and they needed to call for a tow. They sort of stuck around in the shade for a while before a truck came and pulled their rusty ride away. I don't believe there's a single whole car in all of the county on most days.

Turns out this guy is a local artist and has gained a certain amount of local fame for his intriguing sculptures of rabbits and things which have certain human organs. The girl is not his daughter, as I thought, but rather his partner. No one around here has a husband or wife. They all have partners. It's very business-like. I imagine they go in 40/60 on the household or something.

Toledo is also represented in the CSA barn scale collection.  Three cheers for the Midwest.

"Who needs brakes?" and Other Tales of a Dangerous Truck

This is our beater. It has no brakes.

As Ron says, "But who needs brakes?"

That is to say, the beater has about 33% of what I suppose it's braking capacity must have been in 1977, the year of its birth. It conked out a number of years ago, and was only recently resuscitated last year, I believe, by one of my coworkers on a rainy day. Since then, it's mission has been to cause general havoc and mayhem. For example, after distribution on Tuesday, Anne gave me a ride to the bottom of the grassy slope which passes for my driveway up to my quarters. We park there for a second, finishing our conversation, when all of a sudden a yell which sounds like "Nuuuuhhh Braaaaaaa!" and a wooshing sound of grass. We look at each other. The yell wafts through the gentle breeze again, this time clearer: "No brakes!" I have never seen any one start an ignition as quickly as Anne did. Our car bumped forward at the same moment Ron came whizzing down the hill and took a hairpin scream to the right, back onto the driveway--narrowly missing us. He had, as we are often want to do around here, been rolling down in neutral, hence the peaceful woosh of grass rather than the more distinctive--and properly ominous--sound of an engine. Brakes or no brakes, I'll be flattened one of these days by these silent trucks of damnation.

The beater is actually surprisingly reliable--it always starts, it almost never dies, even when you do something stupid like, say, fail to give it the correct clutch/gas ratio when easing away from the barn on a cold engine. It's pretty quaint to drive, too, all full of the smells of sun-eaten leather and old hay, and you feel like a real farm hand until you peel out onto the main drive way and accidently get her going to, oh, 20 mph, and you realize as you crest the hill down to Polly's place and your head cracks against the ceiling that you actually have zero control over this situation. The seat is too far back to get a good toe-hold on the pedal, but it doesn't matter because you can floor that brake and ain't nothin' much gonna happen, sweetie. So you learn to use the gears to moderate speed and not nurse the clutch as I tend to do because gravity, well, she wins every time when you're in a quarter-ton pickup careening down a gravel road to an uncertain end.

It's like riding a rollercoaster without the pleasure of knowing the thing complies to safety regulations. That is to say, a lot of fun.

Take today: I had to do some weed-wacking down at Polly's. I've driven it a number of times now; I've got it stuck in the wet grass up at my quarters once, but other than that, all's well. I know how to ease up on first gear so that she slows enough to nose to a halt beside the barn. So far, so good. On my way back, however, I decide to park it up by our upper barn, on the machine pad, which means driving up a bit of a steep embankment. Well, I didn't have enough momentum, quite, and so she starts rolling backwards and I completely loose both my mind and any skill I may have had. Foot petrified on the clutch, I rip backwards down the drive, crunch over the gravel mound and manage to miss my coworkers new truck on one side of the road and the greenhouse on the other by jerking the steering wheel around the way little kids mime driving. She picks up speed, and I realize that directly in my path of destruction stands a) the office and b) the telephone pole--they're about 10 feet away by this point. So I crank the wheel again and the sheer momentum pushes me halfway up the opposing hill and I sort of rock to a stop at the bottom.

I sat there a moment, waited for the adrenaline to drain away, turned the key, and nosed back to the barn, grateful that no one in the office had been watching.

Let's figure out if Steve Gehrke is brilliant

I'd never heard of this poet before, Steve Gehrke, but he has two things in the July/August issue of Poetry, and one of them, "The New Self", is kind of crazy. This piece has something to it that I'm not sure I've seen before -- this weird energy or movement or musicality, and a slippery darkness that's hard to explain but really vivid/visceral. You all should read it and tell me what you think. Serena, I especially want know what you think about the "this language is the jeweler's bluff" bit. And if anyone picks up any Prufrock/Eliot references besides in the sixth stanza, please let me know.

New Proposal

I've noticed something a little odd about Harlem. There's always lots less-than-pleasant stuff on the street -- huge bags of garbage, broken glass, people smoking pot, pieces of chicken (I slipped on one as I was walking into the grocery store the other day) -- but one thing in particular seems to show up a lot: gloves. Latex gloves, for instance, just regularly find their way to the sidewalk, sometimes via the sky, and today when I was walking up the stairs from the subway, I noticed a yellow rubber glove on one of the steps. So I'm thinking about starting a Gloves of Harlem tumblr. After all, there must be a lot of people with just one glove, wondering how they could have lost its perfect match, and it might be a nice community service to point out where and when I notice these misplaced items, just as a way to give back.

On the bus again

I hate when people who have window seats don't look out the window. I always feel a little rude awkwardly leaning over them to look at what's going on outside, but you know what else is rude? Ignoring a beautiful sunset over the Hudson to tool around on your iPhone.

More Fun with Blood & Guts

A map of Floyd County where groundhog is a venerable component of traditional Brunswick stew.

I made a joke about a week ago about keeping the next groundhog we caught to eat it and skin it. Polly took me seriously, and when one turned up this morning, she asked me if I wanted it. Well, yes, actually, yes I do.

Nii'Anung, Polly's husband who is from Ghana, is the Resident Expert on Slaughtering Things, and he got kind of excited about the whole project when I asked him to show me how it's done. Apparently they have some similar critter in Ghana called a "grass cutter" and they're considered quite tasty. If you have a surplus, you just hang them over the wood fire and let them cure.

So that's how I found myself lugging a wire cage out of the pickup truck, trying not to get bit by an angry member of the squirrel family. I mean, I'd be mad, too.

I had never actually seen anything be shot before today. Ron did the honors with his .22, and after two little bloody explosions, the groundhog was sufficiently dead--though its nerves hadn't got the memo and it kept twitching for a while. Actually it kept twitching even after we cut off the head. (I'm sorry, again, about being graphic. I live on a farm. What do you expect.)

I confess that, like the chickens, the whole experience made me a bit nauseous. It's weird--I have absolutely no problem intellectually with killing and eating animals. None. In fact, for us to eat the groundhog is more reasonable than us just shooting it and dumping its sorry carcass in the woods, which is what we normally do. And yet, I didn't want to look--I didn't want to see it get its little brains shot out as it nosed toward the sky. I didn't want to look as I helped Nii'Anung take its skin off like a little rabbity-smelling shirt. What was I afraid of when we hacked off its hands and feet? I was afraid.

One of my professors in college often talked about the fear of violence--that desire to avert one's eyes, or Gawain's flinch, or the small cry the person next to you in the movie theater makes as the hero almost dies. You know that the act is moral, you know you are safe, you know the actor isn't hurt--and yet somehow in watching that violence, you are implicated in that act and you are afraid. The flinch testifies. For me, it's actually worse watching someone butcher an animal than doing it myself. As if that little act of voyeurism, that being-a-human-being as I participate in death in an animal kind of way, confronts me with the reality of violence even more than committing (morally sanctioned) violence.

The fear of violence: The realization that violence is always serious even when it is not morally wrong, even the death of a groundhog.

When I have kids, I want to teach them how to slaughter animals. When they read about blood in books, I want them to know the smell of fascia and muscle and entrails. Why? Because I think that butchering confronts one, even subconsciously, with the strange paradox of being a human being--an animal and not an animal, "both in and out of the game, watching and wondering at it" to quote Uncle Walt. I don't want them to have a dichotomy of violence in their minds: violence which is morally sanctioned and violence which is evil. I want them to know that violence is always serious.

So I'll thank God for this little extinction of being as I dig into dinner on Friday (I have to let it sit in brine to mellow out the gamey flavor). I hope it's tasty.

Floyd's Been Occupied

When I went to the health food store on Saturday, the Occupy movement shopped with me. Or at least this woman did. She's touring the U.S., spreading the message of the 99%, letting people paint her car (I regret not doing this), and setting up palm-reading booths to make a few dollars. No joke. A week ago I talked to an older guy for about a half an hour; he, too, is touring the nation, calling himself a modern-day Jack Kerouac, and selling little paintings along the way. Completely insane and a really nice guy. I gave him a dollar.

Apparently the younguns spearheading the movement are not exactly the most organized of people, and older folk like her are getting involved to help them realize that they need things like water, healthy food, and funding to get along. She told me about an older nurse who took care of everyone on one of the last marches, even buying food with her own money. Apparently one young chap made the fatal mistake of wearing boxers instead of briefs and ended up with a swollen scrotum. I'm sorry for being graphic, but that's what she said, and I only speak the truth. Gentlemen: Consider yourself duly warned when you attend your next rally.

I'm actually tossing around the idea of attending the Occupy Monsanto rally in North Carolina next month. Don't be hatin'.

In other news, next Sunday I'll be seeing Allison Kraus at FloydFest. I'm planning on wearing my fabulous silk Indian skirt, sandals, and fitting right in. I may even borrow a tie-dyed shirt. When in Rome, my friends.